Mr. Standfast
Peter’s was the real thing. He used to ferret about in the Bible and
the _Pilgrim’s Progress_—they were both equally inspired in his
eyes—and find texts which he interpreted in his own way to meet his
case. He took everything quite literally. What happened three thousand
years ago in Palestine might, for all he minded, have been going on
next door. I used to chaff him and tell him that he was like the
Kaiser, very good at fitting the Bible to his purpose, but his
sincerity was so complete that he only smiled. I remember one night,
when he had been thinking about his flying days, he found a passage in
Thessalonians about the dead rising to meet their Lord in the air, and
that cheered him a lot. Peter, I could see, had the notion that his
time here wouldn’t be very long, and he liked to think that when he got
his release he would find once more the old rapture.
Once, when I said something about his patience, he said he had got to
try to live up to Mr Standfast. He had fixed on that character to
follow, though he would have preferred Mr Valiant-for-Truth if he had
thought himself good enough. He used to talk about Mr Standfast in his
queer way as if he were a friend of us both, like Blenkiron.... I tell
you I was humbled out of all my pride by the sight of Peter, so
uncomplaining and gentle and wise. The Almighty Himself couldn’t have
made a prig out of him, and he never would have thought of preaching.
Only once did he give me advice. I had always a liking for short cuts,
and I was getting a bit restive under the long inaction. One day when I
expressed my feelings on the matter, Peter upped and read from the
_Pilgrim’s Progress_: “Some also have wished that the next way to their
Father’s house were here, that they might be troubled no more with
either hills or mountains to go over, but the Way is the Way, and there
is an end.”
All the same when we got into March and nothing happened I grew pretty
anxious. Blenkiron had said we were fighting against time, and here
were the weeks slipping away. His letters came occasionally, always in
the shape of communications from my aunt. One told me that I would soon
be out of a job, for Peter’s repatriation was just about through, and
he might get his movement order any day. Another spoke of my little
cousin over the hills, and said that she hoped soon to be going to a
place called Santa Chiara in the Val Saluzzana. I got out the map in a
hurry and measured the distance from there to St Anton and pored over
the two roads thither—the short one by the Staub Pass and the long one
by the Marjolana. These letters made me think that things were nearing
a climax, but still no instructions came. I had nothing to report in my
own messages, I had discovered nothing in the Pink Chalet but idle
servants, I was not even sure if the Pink Chalet were not a harmless
villa, and I hadn’t come within a thousand miles of finding Chelius.
All my desire to imitate Peter’s stoicism didn’t prevent me from
getting occasionally rattled and despondent.
The one thing I could do was to keep fit, for I had a notion I might
soon want all my bodily strength. I had to keep up my pretence of
lameness in the daytime, so I used to take my exercise at night. I
would sleep in the afternoon, when Peter had his siesta, and then about
ten in the evening, after putting him to bed, I would slip out-of-doors
and go for a four or five hours’ tramp. Wonderful were those midnight
wanderings. I pushed up through the snow-laden pines to the ridges
where the snow lay in great wreaths and scallops, till I stood on a
crest with a frozen world at my feet and above me a host of glittering
stars. Once on a night of full moon I reached the glacier at the valley
head, scrambled up the moraine to where the ice began, and peered
fearfully into the spectral crevasses. At such hours I had the earth to
myself, for there was not a sound except the slipping of a burden of
snow from the trees or the crack and rustle which reminded me that a
glacier was a moving river. The war seemed very far away, and I felt
the littleness of our human struggles, till I thought of Peter turning
from side to side to find ease in the cottage far below me. Then I
realised that the spirit of man was the greatest thing in this spacious
world.... I would get back about three or four, have a bath in the
water which had been warming in my absence, and creep into bed, almost
ashamed of having two sound legs, when a better man a yard away had but
one.
Oddly enough at these hours there seemed more life in the Pink Chalet
than by day. Once, tramping across the lake long after midnight, I saw
lights in the lake-front in windows which for ordinary were blank and
shuttered. Several times I cut across the grounds, when the moon was
dark. On one such occasion a great car with no lights swept up the
drive, and I heard low voices at the door. Another time a man ran
hastily past me, and entered the house by a little door on the eastern
side, which I had not before noticed.... Slowly the conviction began to
grow on me that we were not wrong in marking down this place, that
things went on within it which it deeply concerned us to discover. But
I was puzzled to think of a way. I might butt inside, but for all I
knew it would be upsetting Blenkiron’s plans, for he had given me no
instructions about housebreaking. All this unsettled me worse than
ever. I began to lie awake planning some means of entrance.... I would
be a peasant from the next valley who had twisted his ankle.... I would
go seeking an imaginary cousin among the servants.... I would start a
fire in the place and have the doors flung open to zealous
neighbours....
And then suddenly I got instructions in a letter from Blenkiron.
It came inside a parcel of warm socks that arrived from my kind aunt.
But the letter for me was not from her. It was in Blenkiron’s large
sprawling hand and the style of it was all his own. He told me that he
had about finished his job. He had got his line on Chelius, who was the
bird he expected, and that bird would soon wing its way southward
across the mountains for the reason I knew of.
“We’ve got an almighty move on,” he wrote, “and please God you’re going
to hustle some in the next week. It’s going better than I ever hoped.”
But something was still to be done. He had struck a countryman, one
Clarence Donne, a journalist of Kansas City, whom he had taken into the
business. Him he described as a “crackerjack” and commended to my
esteem. He was coming to St Anton, for there was a game afoot at the
Pink Chalet, which he would give me news of. I was to meet him next
evening at nine-fifteen at the little door in the east end of the
house. “For the love of Mike, Dick,” he concluded, “be on time and do
everything Clarence tells you as if he was me. It’s a mighty complex
affair, but you and he have sand enough to pull through. Don’t worry
about your little cousin. She’s safe and out of the job now.”
My first feeling was one of immense relief, especially at the last
words. I read the letter a dozen times to make sure I had its meaning.
A flash of suspicion crossed my mind that it might be a fake,
principally because there was no mention of Peter, who had figured
large in the other missives. But why should Peter be mentioned when he
wasn’t on in this piece? The signature convinced me. Ordinarily
Blenkiron signed himself in full with a fine commercial flourish. But
when I was at the Front he had got into the habit of making a kind of
hieroglyphic of his surname to me and sticking J.S. after it in a
bracket. That was how this letter was signed, and it was sure proof it
was all right.
I spent that day and the next in wild spirits. Peter spotted what was
on, though I did not tell him for fear of making him envious. I had to
be extra kind to him, for I could see that he ached to have a hand in
the business. Indeed he asked shyly if I couldn’t fit him in, and I had
to lie about it and say it was only another of my aimless
circumnavigations of the Pink Chalet.
“Try and find something where I can help,” he pleaded. “I’m pretty
strong still, though I’m lame, and I can shoot a bit.”
I declared that he would be used in time, that Blenkiron had promised
he would be used, but for the life of me I couldn’t see how.
At nine o’clock on the evening appointed I was on the lake opposite the
house, close in under the shore, making my way to the rendezvous. It
was a coal-black night, for though the air was clear the stars were
shining with little light, and the moon had not yet risen. With a
premonition that I might be long away from food, I had brought some
slabs of chocolate, and my pistol and torch were in my pocket. It was
bitter cold, but I had ceased to mind weather, and I wore my one suit
and no overcoat.
The house was like a tomb for silence. There was no crack of light
anywhere, and none of those smells of smoke and food which proclaim
habitation. It was an eerie job scrambling up the steep bank east of
the place, to where the flat of the garden started, in a darkness so
great that I had to grope my way like a blind man.
I found the little door by feeling along the edge of the building. Then
I stepped into an adjacent clump of laurels to wait on my companion. He
was there before me.
“Say,” I heard a rich Middle West voice whisper, “are you Joseph
Zimmer? I’m not shouting any names, but I guess you are the guy I was
told to meet here.”
“Mr Donne?” I whispered back.
“The same,” he replied. “Shake.”
I gripped a gloved and mittened hand which drew me towards the door.
CHAPTER XVI
I Lie on a Hard Bed
The journalist from Kansas City was a man of action. He wasted no words
in introducing himself or unfolding his plan of campaign. “You’ve got
to follow me, mister, and not deviate one inch from my tracks. The
explaining part will come later. There’s big business in this shack
tonight.” He unlocked the little door with scarcely a sound, slid the
crust of snow from his boots, and preceded me into a passage as black
as a cellar. The door swung smoothly behind us, and after the sharp
out-of-doors the air smelt stuffy as the inside of a safe.
A hand reached back to make sure that I followed. We appeared to be in
a flagged passage under the main level of the house. My hobnailed boots
slipped on the floor, and I steadied myself on the wall, which seemed
to be of undressed stone. Mr Donne moved softly and assuredly, for he
was better shod for the job than me, and his guiding hand came back
constantly to make sure of my whereabouts.
I remember that I felt just as I had felt when on that August night I
had explored the crevice of the Coolin—the same sense that something
queer was going to happen, the same recklessness and contentment.
Moving a foot at a time with immense care, we came to a right-hand
turning. Two shallow steps led us to another passage, and then my
groping hands struck a blind wall. The American was beside me, and his
mouth was close to my ear.
“Got to crawl now,” he whispered. “You lead, mister, while I shed this
coat of mine. Eight feet on your stomach and then upright.”
I wriggled through a low tunnel, broad enough to take three men
abreast, but not two feet high. Half-way through I felt suffocated, for
I never liked holes, and I had a momentary anxiety as to what we were
after in this cellar pilgrimage. Presently I smelt free air and got on
to my knees.
“Right, mister?” came a whisper from behind. My companion seemed to be
waiting till I was through before he followed.
“Right,” I answered, and very carefully rose to my feet.
Then something happened behind me. There was a jar and a bump as if the
roof of the tunnel had subsided. I turned sharply and groped at the
mouth. I stuck my leg down and found a block.